


A Father's Love

by kronette



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Devil's Trap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kronette/pseuds/kronette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve always been all right. It wasn’t a question of ‘maybe’; his boys were always all right. Even when he put too much pressure on Dean to watch out for his little brother; even when he got into yet another screaming match with Sammy, they were always all right. In the end.</p><p>He just didn’t think the end would be…this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Father's Love

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 29 May 2006 @ 12:54 am.

They’ve always been all right. It wasn’t a question of ‘maybe’; his boys were _always_ all right. Even when he put too much pressure on Dean to watch out for his little brother; even when he got into yet another screaming match with Sammy, they were always all right. In the end.

He just didn’t think the end would be… _this_.

He stood outside the crumpled Impala, eyes flicking from the front seat to the back. From Sam to Dean, both their faces bloody. Sam possibly had a piece of glass wedged in his neck…not enough blood for it to have hit an artery. Didn’t mean his boy wasn’t going to be in a heap of pain if he woke up. When he woke up. And Dean…

His heart seized in his chest, and his stomach twisted angrily as he replayed what the demon had done to his boy. What the demon had made him to do his boy. He’d never raised a fist or hand to either boy, just his voice. Always his voice, unable to hurt either of Mary’s boys. Not that way, anyway. He hurt them in other, subtle ways.

It looked like Dean was bleeding out. Blood was dripping from the crack beneath the door, where it might never fit properly again. Almost a steady flow coming from Dean’s heart; his life blood. Winchester blood. _His_ blood.

He was beside Dean in the car, the stench of blood and gas and death cloying. His left hand rested on Dean’s chest, feeling the weak, erratic pulse, the wheeze of his lungs with each fought-for breath. Blood flowed over his hand, tainting his skin.

Eyelashes fluttered and he shushed Dean quietly. Always did listen to his dad. A soft moan and Dean’s lips moved – hadn’t been listening to his dad lately. Had a new tone to his voice; a man’s voice. No longer his little boy. No longer his shadow.

The whisper was more an exhale than a word, “Daddy?” Such fear and longing in those two syllables; such hope and desperation.

“Stay quiet, son,” he ordered, though pitched his voice low. Blood was trickling down his arm, and he knew it was time. He spared one glance to Sam, then turned his full attention to his dying son. “Dean, I could say all sorts of things to reconcile the way I raised you and your brother, but none of that matters, now. You’re grown; you’re your own man. You do what you want with your life. You don’t – you don’t have to continue on my path. It’s destructive. I don’t want you destroyed. You’re all I have; you and your brother. If anything happens to you…”

The chest beneath him stilled; the flow of blood lessened.

John’s hand clenched around the amulet above Dean’s heart, until the horns pierced his skin. His blood mingled with Dean’s, and he began an incantation that no mortal had heard in four thousand years.

~~~

Dean inhaled sharply, instantly regretting the move. He felt broken ribs shift and tried to breathe shallowly, but everything _hurt_. God, his chest…he tried to move a hand to it, but couldn’t lift it. _What?_ He cracked his eyes open, and it took him a moment to adjust. Backseat of the Impala. _Why?_ Sticky hands; sticky shirt…blood. He was covered in blood, and it was _his_.

He would have sat upright if his body could have moved: Demon. The fucking demon had dad. Made dad...no, not dad. The _demon_ tortured him, wearing dad’s face. But dad beat it; dad pushed it back. Dad stopped it from killing him.

He tried to smile, to show relief, but his mouth wasn’t working. His face hurt, hell, his _teeth_ hurt. Why wasn’t the car moving? “Sam?” he rasped, voice rusty as if he hadn’t used it in years. Sam had been driving. Why did they stop? He wrapped his fingers around the top of the front seat and half pulled, half pushed himself closer to the front. “Sam,” he tried again, but his brother’s head didn’t move.

His hand had fresh blood on it when he pulled it away from the seat. _No_. He reached out a trembling hand and touched his brother’s shoulder. Sam started to slump down, and his heart beat wildly, silent screams echoing in his head, when a groan cut through his panic.

“Sam,” he breathed, cradling his brother’s head in his weak hand as Sam fell gently against the door. _Alive_.

His heart seized in his chest as he finally looked to his right, toward the light that cut through the backwoods of Missouri. The semi’s headlights backlit Dad, head wound bleeding profusely, his right side all but fused to the metal of the car.

“Dad?” Dean called brokenly, not daring to reach out. The blood ran like tear-tracks down his dad’s face. Dad only cried for important things; life and death matters. Never for show; it always _meant_ something. Jim and Caleb’s death. Mom’s death. Dean’s first serious injury while on the hunt, which nearly cost him his leg. Sammy leaving where he couldn’t be protected any more.

Words Dad said to him while handing him the Colt conflicted with other words; other orders: _You do what you want with your life._ _It’s your fight; you finish this. You don’t have to continue on my path. You finish what I started._

Tears blurred his vision as his eyes dropped to the seat, to the glint in Dad’s left hand. Unthinking, Dean reached down and opened Dad’s stiff fingers, expecting to find a cell phone. Instead, he recoiled at the familiar amulet on a familiar chain. His other hand went around his neck, but the necklace that had been there as long as he could remember was gone.

_Blood of my blood._

Dean shook his head to clear it, but the oddly spoken words stayed with him.

_Soul to soul._

They weren’t in English. How could he understand them?

_Anubis and Osiris, I beseech you above all others._

Light again reflected off the amulet, and a long-forgotten conversation replayed itself in his mind:

_“Dean, I’m entrusting this to you. Never, under any circumstances, are you to remove it.”_

_“What’s it for?” seven year old-Dean asked as the necklace was placed around his neck, and the heavy weight hit his chest._

_“You just need to know it’s very important. I’ve never lied to you, have I, son?”_

_“No,” he answered timidly, sometimes wishing Dad_ would _lie to him._

_A firm pat on his shoulder and a small smile erased all of little Dean’s worries. “One day, I promise, you’ll know what it means.”_

With visibly shaking fingers, he pulled the necklace from Dad’s grip, feeling the skin pull and tear where it had dug into Dad’s palm. Egyptian. That’s what the incantation was; something in Egyptian. Beseeching Osiris, the god of the dead.

_If anything happens to you…_

“What have you done?” he cried softly, his voice shattered, slumping against the seat, taking in Dad’s profile. He looked almost serene, despite the blood clotting his hair and streaking his face. Despite his crushed right side. Despite the lack of his chest rising and falling.

A whimper stuck in Dean’s throat. Twenty-three years of his life in that passenger’s seat, fighting beside his dad, watching his back, cleaning his wounds, being more brother-in-arms than son.

Dean was unable to stop the tears from flowing. He cried when he was alone, when he was scared enough to admit it; when he had to face his past. Most of all, he cried when a father’s love outweighed even death.

“I love you, too, daddy.”

The end


End file.
